Can we take back the Amiga?

[Nightfox]

Hi all

The Amiga scene is unstoppable and we are all thankful of Hyperion's work bringing us AmigaOS 3.2 and I know that the Amiga is very capable of receiving many many more updates into the future. As much as I am in love with Hyperion, their updates for AmigaOS are slow which is understandable because they are only a couple of guys doing it part time.

I was wondering about the feasibility of the community getting together and managing to secure funds to acquire a license from Amiga Inc (possibly in collaboration with Hyperion too if it's agreed that AmigaOS is still a paid product and sales money goes to Hyperion).

In an ideal world AmigaOS would be made open source but the next best option would be to have it in the hands of passionate Amiga devs who can launch the Amiga to new heights.

I fear that this AmigaOS 3.2 release from Hyperion is just a short term spark from them. They don't even maintain their forum. My forum account has been pending activation for months now.

Has anyone actually looked into getting a license from Amiga Inc to work on AmigaOS or getting a license from Hyperion to develop from their work?

If Hyperion wanted me to work on AmigaOS with agreement that I get no payment from any sales then I would happily agree.

All I want is for Amiga to grow and right now I see a huge roadblock that is really stifling progress and innovation for Amiga.

[Samurai_Crow]

ApolloOS' fork of AROS is open source but only people who have NOT signed an NDA with Hyperion Entertainment (or any other commercial operating system) are eligible to work on it.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Nightfox

In an ideal world AmigaOS would be made open source but the next best option would be to have it in the hands of passionate Amiga devs who can launch the Amiga to new heights.

But it is in the hands of passionate Amiga devs. And no, "Open Source" is in my opinon not the ideal option for that development.

Originally Posted by Nightfox

Has anyone actually looked into getting a license from Amiga Inc to work on AmigaOS or getting a license from Hyperion to develop from their work?

You can just check with the developers to get access to it if you really want to.

Originally Posted by Nightfox

All I want is for Amiga to grow and right now I see a huge roadblock that is really stifling progress and innovation for Amiga.

But that's entirely in your hands.

[Nightfox]

Has AROS reached the stage of being able to completely replace AmigaOS yet? I'm down for replacing AmigaOS if necessary, but I'd still prefer AmigaOS to expand.

I'd love everyone to work together (Hyperion included) and keep the Amiga flooded with regular updates. I'd absolutely love the Amiga to keep getting new modern features and toolkits for devs to make apps on it. Like right now I'm making an Amiga app using texteditor.gadget and many of the functions dont even work and the documentation just lists them as not implemented yet.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

ApolloOS' fork of AROS is open source but only people who have NOT signed an NDA with Hyperion Entertainment (or any other commercial operating system) are eligible to work on it.

Ah, apparently, "not quite so open", right? (-; That's a discriminative licence.

[Bren McGuire]

this is beating a dead horse mate these greedy people will never let the community own it so dont be so hasty in "thanking hyperion" when they are one of the many reasons why the amiga mark and stuff is in the dire state that it is

Originally Posted by Nightfox

Hi all

The Amiga scene is unstoppable and we are all thankful of Hyperion's work bringing us AmigaOS 3.2 and I know that the Amiga is very capable of receiving many many more updates into the future. As much as I am in love with Hyperion, their updates for AmigaOS are slow which is understandable because they are only a couple of guys doing it part time.

I was wondering about the feasibility of the community getting together and managing to secure funds to acquire a license from Amiga Inc (possibly in collaboration with Hyperion too if it's agreed that AmigaOS is still a paid product and sales money goes to Hyperion).

In an ideal world AmigaOS would be made open source but the next best option would be to have it in the hands of passionate Amiga devs who can launch the Amiga to new heights.

I fear that this AmigaOS 3.2 release from Hyperion is just a short term spark from them. They don't even maintain their forum. My forum account has been pending activation for months now.

Has anyone actually looked into getting a license from Amiga Inc to work on AmigaOS or getting a license from Hyperion to develop from their work?

If Hyperion wanted me to work on AmigaOS with agreement that I get no payment from any sales then I would happily agree.

All I want is for Amiga to grow and right now I see a huge roadblock that is really stifling progress and innovation for Amiga.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Ah, apparently, "not quite so open", right? (-; That's a discriminative licence.

You just can't unsee what you've seen. Reverse engineering requires a black-box approach to be legal. This has nothing to do with the open-source license. Rather, it has more to do with honoring the NDA you've signed.

[Nightfox]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

this is beating a dead horse mate these greedy people will never let the community own it so dont be so hasty in "thanking hyperion" when they are one of the many reasons why the amiga mark and stuff is in the dire state that it is

You are right. But the AmigaOS 3.2 work they did was great and I am thankful for it. Hyperion could have just done nothing instead so I am thankful for what we have

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

this is beating a dead horse mate these greedy people will never let the community own it so dont be so hasty in "thanking hyperion" when they are one of the many reasons why the amiga mark and stuff is in the dire state that it is

Look, this sounds very "romantic", but there is no "community" as a closed group with all common interests. There are, as always, multiple parties with mulitple interests and mulitple directions where to drive a project. Actually, with that "community" we see here we would not see one AmigaOs, but ten versions, all incomplete and all non-working because everyone wants to drive it into another direction.


If AmigaOs needs one particular thing then a common direction where development has to go. That need not to be my direction, but there is not sufficient devleopment power for the five desktops Linux supports. It's rarely enough power for one.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Look, this sounds very "romantic", but there is no "community" as a closed group with all common interests. There are, as always, multiple parties with mulitple interests and mulitple directions where to drive a project. Actually, with that "community" we see here we would not see one AmigaOs, but ten versions, all incomplete and all non-working because everyone wants to drive it into another direction.

That direction is open enough that I don't need to sign my freedom away just to see what's already been done and tried in the closed-source past, the closed source has had little hope of a future when it became niche. Business models need not apply here. It's all hobby time now.

[pixie]

It's about 22 years since Hyperion got a license for OS 4, when we see how far and how amazing their record is one ought to give them a great round of applause! They took a license for PPC and now they practically own the thing. One also have to love a business model where developers don't get paid, it inspires confidence! In the end we should blame Cloanto for actually having bought the damn thing, god forbid them to actually be able to sell their stuff.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

You just can't unsee what you've seen. Reverse engineering requires a black-box approach to be legal. This has nothing to do with the open-source license. Rather, it has more to do with honoring the NDA you've signed.

Look, I'm personally not interested as I'm trying to be responsible, but what we have here is an exclusive and unfair clause.



It is up to each individual to act according to the NDA in his or hers on responsibility, but discriminating people is not the right way to handle this situation for an "Open Source" project. The right way to handle is to first have people sign an agreement with the corresponding license of the project, and then trace and mirror who contributed which code. This is how GPL projects do it. There are reasons why commits there have to be signed (and for git supporting this workflow).

[Nightfox]

It's still ok for Amiga operating systems to split into various distros/forks but there would still optimally be a standard such that software written for one would require little or no effort to run on another. But inevitably there would most likely still remain a favourite default OS that most people stick with (like nowadays if you want a Linux system, most people would just go with Ubuntu

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Nightfox

It's still ok for Amiga operating systems to split into various distros/forks but there would still optimally be a standard such that software written for one would require little or no effort to run on another. But inevitably there would most likely still remain a favourite default OS that most people stick with (like nowadays if you want a Linux system, most people would just go with Ubuntu

And there we have exactly the problem. I see no reason against distributions packing software in an easy-to-install way, provided the corresponding software authors agree with this form of distribution (I am personally ok provided my code remains unmodified and complete, including manuals).


The problem is the second part, unstable interfaces. That is the real curse of Linux. "You never know how the print command is called today", they say.


It there is "kinna working" because there are sufficient people to clean up behind the mess, but there are not sufficient people here in Amiga land for this luxury. Somebody has to wear the hat and drive the specifications of the AmigaOs interface.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

It there is "kinna working" because there are sufficient people to clean up behind the mess, but there are not sufficient people here in Amiga land for this luxury. Somebody has to wear the hat and drive the specifications of the AmigaOs interface.

Specifications to code that needs to be reverse engineered are helpful but don't free us from corporate legaleze regarding redistribution of copyrighted code with a largely-compatible OS. Fortunately, MUI custom classes are readily available as freeware and most of those classes run on Zune as well as MUI.

[Minuous]

This thread is about AmigaOS, I don't see what MUI has to do with it.

>I was wondering about the feasibility of the community getting together and managing to secure funds to acquire a license from Amiga Inc (possibly in collaboration with Hyperion too if it's agreed that AmigaOS is still a paid product and sales money goes to Hyperion).

Amiga Inc. have already exclusively licenced it to Hyperion, therefore they cannot licence it to anyone else.

>In an ideal world AmigaOS would be made open source but the next best option would be to have it in the hands of passionate Amiga devs who can launch the Amiga to new heights.

It already is...

>Has anyone actually looked into getting a license from Amiga Inc to work on AmigaOS or getting a license from Hyperion to develop from their work?

It is already possible to work on it, for those with the required skills. Of course an NDA is needed, I have had to sign one every time I work on the codebase of a commercial product, not just AmigaOS, it is just standard practice.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Minuous

This thread is about AmigaOS, I don't see what MUI has to do with it.

MUI is closed-source freeware and can be more freely bundled if the license permits it as was ClassAct. The new Reaction classes are not redistributable independent of Hyperion Entertainment. That's my point.

Originally Posted by Minuous

>Has anyone actually looked into getting a license from Amiga Inc to work on AmigaOS or getting a license from Hyperion to develop from their work?

It is already possible to work on it, for those with the required skills. Of course an NDA is needed, I have had to sign one every time I work on the codebase of a commercial product, not just AmigaOS, it is just standard practice.

Trevor Dickenson offered me access to the AmigaOS 4.x source at one point but since it would prevent me from doing the same work for AROS, I turned down the NDA blocked access. I knew that if I got it done on AROS first, I would be able to redistribute my source freely and relicense my own code for use with AmigaOS 4.x without having to sign an NDA at all!

The point I'm trying to make is that on a micro-exokernel operating system like AmigaOS, it's modular enough that making plugins and addons seldom need NDA protected access anyway! All I'm saying is: Consider your options before you sign.

[matt3k]

3.2 is a fun hobby on classic hardware, we will have 3.3 I would guess next year as the team seems to plug away at it. The Development team are a great group doing the work about as best as could be expected at this point. So I'm not crazy about the money I pay for it going to a void and not into the pockets of the developers, but given our classic options I will keep it that way to keep the ball moving at this point.

4.x is pretty much dead to me at this point. The hardware is extremely limited/expensive and 4.1 does less than 3.2.2 and the endless lawsuit has devastated this platform.

AROS is a fork that will solve the hardware, but is also handicapped by the lack of native applications for it and gets around it by rabbit hole.

MorphOS has evolved and been developed by a serious margin. 3.18 was just released and they are already plugging away at 3.19. They offer the best application set (They wisely put their effort into a toolset that gives the OS an advantage and having MUI native in the OS helps.). The application set and performance make this a robust offering. If I had to thank anyone I would thank those developers who brought us cheap and powerful options and the ability to browse the web, get email, and use SMB productively to name a few... They just put their heads down for over 20 years and made things happen. It's also nice to know that the limited money I spent for licenses went to the team and operating system, where I saw the fruits of that.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Nightfox

All I want is for Amiga to grow and right now I see a huge roadblock that is really stifling progress and innovation for Amiga.

For 'the Amiga' to grow you'd need new people that use it. There is a small amount of people that get interested, but overall it's a very small niche. That niche is further divided into even smaller niches and it doesn't look like they'll 'join forces' any time soon. Improving one of the OSes will not change that situation I'm afraid.

[StevenJGore]

I think it also depends on what each of us are here for. For me, I've tried to update my A1200's hardware and software to be as "modern" as possible simply for the challenge and enjoyment of doing so, but I accept I'm never going to use it for any serious productivity. Why would I, it would be tortuous!

Therefore, AmigaOS to me is just a hobby retro OS with a few modern features that is still being updated, and the current devs of 3.2.X are doing a great job as is. Supplemented with the Amiga community and Aminet, it's almost infinitely configurable anyway. It doesn't need to be open source to achieve that. I'd rather have a controlled single version, than infinite tedious "community distros" which are all just variations on the same theme.

I suppose if somebody has aspirations of AmigaOS becoming a modern OS, then I can see why taking control might seem to be the solution, but I can also see it fragmenting the Amiga scene in a destructive unhelpful way.